On-chip torsion balances with femtonewton force resolution at room temperature enabled by carbon nanotube and graphene

Lin Cong; Zi Yuan; Zaiqiao Bai; Xinhe Wang; Wei Zhao; Xinyu Gao; Xiaopeng Hu; Peng Liu; Wanlin Guo; Qunqing Li; Shoushan Fan; Kaili Jiang

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd2358

On-chip torsion balances with femtonewton force resolution at room temperature enabled by carbon nanotube and graphene

Sci Adv. 2021 Mar 17;7(12):eabd2358. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abd2358. Print 2021 Mar.

Authors

Lin Cong¹, Zi Yuan¹, Zaiqiao Bai², Xinhe Wang³, Wei Zhao⁴, Xinyu Gao¹, Xiaopeng Hu^{1

5}, Peng Liu¹, Wanlin Guo⁶, Qunqing Li¹, Shoushan Fan¹, Kaili Jiang^{7

5}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Tsinghua-Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Center, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
² Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. baizq@bnu.edu.cn wlguo@nuaa.edu.cn jiangkl@tsinghua.edu.cn.
³ Fert Beijing Research Institute, School of Microelectronics and Beijing Advanced Innovation Centre for Big Data and Brain Computing (BDBC), Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China.
⁴ No. 58 Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Research Group Corporation, Wuxi 214035, China.
⁵ Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing 100084, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory for Intelligent Nano Materials and Devices of Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, and Institute of Nanoscience, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China. baizq@bnu.edu.cn wlguo@nuaa.edu.cn jiangkl@tsinghua.edu.cn.
⁷ State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Tsinghua-Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Center, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. baizq@bnu.edu.cn wlguo@nuaa.edu.cn jiangkl@tsinghua.edu.cn.

Abstract

The torsion balance, consisting of a rigid balance beam suspended by a fine thread, is an ancient scientific instrument, yet it is still a very sensitive force sensor to date. As the force sensitivity is proportional to the lengths of the beam and thread, but inversely proportional to the fourth power of the diameter of the thread, nanomaterials should be ideal building blocks for torsion balances. Here, we report a torsional balance array on a chip with the highest sensitivity level enabled by using a carbon nanotube as the thread and a monolayer graphene coated with Al nanofilms as the beam and mirror. It is demonstrated that the femtonewton force exerted by a weak laser can be easily measured. The balances on the chip should serve as an ideal platform for investigating fundamental interactions up to zeptonewton in accuracy in the near future.

Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).